Virgin and Boom's Supersonic Jet Will Get You Across the Atlantic in Under 4 Hours

Earlier this week, Denver-based startup Boom Technology unveiled plans for what it’s billing as “the fastest passenger airplane ever.” Made from lightweight carbon fiber composites, Boom claims its 40-seat jets will reach Mach 2.2 (1,451 miles per hour)—2.6 times faster than any other current commercial airline and 10 percent faster than the retired Concorde.

This afternoon, the news continued to develop: Boom made public that having examined the plane’s specs, Virgin and Virgin Galactic signed a letter of intent to buy 10 of them—should they be developed. Also, according to TechCrunch “Virgin Galactic’s space division, The Spaceship Company, has committed to helping build and test the planes, including helping with the supersonic testing when the time comes.” Boom’s news comes just three weeks after NASA debuted its own early plans for a quieter supersonic commercial jet. The agency awarded a Lockheed Martin-led consortium a $20 million contract for the preliminary design of a “'low boom' flight demonstration aircraft.”

While these announcements signal a renewed interest in civilian supersonic travel—which had been shelved since British Airways and Air France retired the Concorde 13 years ago—the route to you breaking the sound barrier on your vacation will be anything but supersonic. NASA doesn’t expect its prototypes to take to the air until around 2020 (and that’s contingent on continued funding). And while Boom isn’t divulging timelines beyond flying a one-third scale plane sometime in 2017, Bloomberg reports that its current mock cockpit is constructed from cardboard and plywood while the cabin seats were purchased from OfficeMax.

Commercial supersonic travel faces significant technical challenges and, while they can be overcome, doing so has made that form of travel much more expensive than subsonic flight. Part of the reason British Airways and Air France jettisoned the Concorde, after all, was because travelers just weren’t interested in paying the extra cost to shave a few hours off a transatlantic flight.

And while Boom’s expected roundtrip ticket prices of $5,000 between New York City and London (compared to $20,000 in 2003 dollars for the Concorde) may address that last issue, the low price and the plane’s low capacity (again, 40 seats) give the company less revenue to address the high costs of flying faster than the speed of sound. Another perk? The flight would be three and a half hours long (compared to the usual six or so).

There are a lot of factors at play, but aviators have overcome stiffer odds before—like breaking the sound barrier in the first place.